Warsaw Pact Invites NATO to War Games
The Soviet-led Warsaw Pact has invited NATO states to send observers to major military maneuvers for the first time since Moscow’s invasion of Afghanistan, the West German Defense Ministry said today.
A spokesman said the communist alliance had offered all states whose representatives signed the 35-nation 1975 Helsinki accords the chance to watch the Friendship ’86 war games starting in Czechoslovakia on Wednesday.
It was the first time since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 that officers from major NATO states, such as the United States and West Germany, had been given the opportunity to see major Warsaw Pact maneuvers, he said.
“They (the Soviet bloc) seem to want to send some kind of signal, probably as a gesture of good will in connection with the disarmament conference in Stockholm,” the spokesman said.
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